Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

GAMING NEWS

Harmonix Changes CEO, Lays Off 37 Employees

In an official statement today, developer Harmonix of the famed Rock Band and Dance Central franchises has gone through restructuring, including a swap in the position of CEO as well as the layoffs of 37 full-time employees.

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos has relinquished his position to become the Chief Creator Officer, while the company's vice president of operations and publishing, Steve Janiak, will now become CEO.

According to the a Harmonix representative, this restructuring aligns with their development plans moving forward, which includes a fully crowd-sourced revamp for Amplitude on PS3 and PS4, Record Run for iOS platforms, Fantasia: Music Evolved, free-to-play PC game Chroma, and the possibility of Dance Central 4:

Harmonix is in the process of restructuring our organization to bring it into alignment with our current and future product development plans. Unfortunately, this means making the difficult decision to reduce the number of full-time staff. We sincerely appreciate the work of each and every one of these employees. Harmonix is working to ensure that those affected are well taken care of as we make this change.

While Microsoft's recent decision to release a Kinect-less SKU have impacted Harmonix's future user base, the company ensures that this was not the reason for the job losses